Saudi Wahhabi Workers Bulldoze Kosovo Monuments

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Yugoslavia: Saudi Wahhabi Aid Workers Bulldoze Balkan Monuments

By Jolyon Naegele

 

 

"To drive home the significance of the Saudi destruction in the

Balkans, Riedlmayer says, "Imagine, if you will, some terrible

catastrophe affecting the historic churches of Rome and Tuscany, and

then having [u.S. evangelist] Oral Roberts or Mormon missionaries

coming in, taking charge, and insisting that they be redone

in 'proper Christian style.'"

 

 

Last week, construction workers in Kosovo bulldozed the 18th century

facade of a library and a 16th century Koran school that Serbian

forces damaged during fighting last year. The construction workers

were not Serbs, but employees of a Saudi Arabian reconstruction

agency, and were armed with official permits rather than

Kalashnikovs. As RFE/RL correspondent Jolyon Naegele reports, this

was not the first time war-damaged Islamic monuments in the Balkans

have been destroyed in the name of fraternal Islamic assistance.

 

Prague, 4 August 2000 (RFE/RL) -- The Saudi bulldozing of some of the

most historically valuable architectural monuments in the western

Kosovo market town of Djakovica is merely the latest in a series of

iconoclastic activities in the Balkans undertaken in the name of

reconstruction assistance by Arab aid organizations. War-damaged

historic buildings are not repaired, but rather demolished to make

way for what the Arab donors consider to be more proper Islamic

structures.

 

The destruction is a further blow to Kosovo's architectural heritage,

following the destruction by Serbian forces and civilians in 1998 and

1999 of over 200 mosques and other Islamic structures -- about one-

third of the total number in the province.

 

Harvard University Fine Arts librarian Andras Riedlmayer, the co-

author of a survey of Kosovo's war-damaged architectural sites, is

outraged by the Saudi demolition program.

 

"Unfortunately, a Saudi aid agency got permits from the local

reconstruction agency and from the local institute for the

preservation of monuments to work on the restoration, so to speak, of

the Hadum mosque complex in the center of the historic district."

 

Riedlmayer says the Saudis began on Monday last week by trying to

knock down all the Ottoman-era gravestones in the cemetery of the

Hadum mosque.

 

"The Saudis were interested in removing them because they consider

gravestones to be idolatrous. They are followers of Wahhabism, which

is an extremist interpretation of Islam at odds with the practice of

most of the Muslim world."

 

The Wahhabis are a purist movement founded in the 18th century by

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1791). He converted the Saud tribe,

which now rules Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis are the largest and most

powerful sect in Saudi Arabia.

 

Riedlmayer says the Saudis are obsessed with having all ancient

tombstones, mausoleums, and Sufi shrines located near mosques

eliminated, since -- unlike most Muslims in the world today -- the

Wahhabis believe these to be "un-Islamic" and idolatrous. He

said "the Wahhabis, with their wealth and fanaticism, are a menace to

heritage, in some ways more dangerous than the [serb paramilitary]

Chetniks, since about the latter, at least, no one harbors any

illusions regarding their uncharitable intentions."

 

The Saudi Joint Relief Committee for the People of Kosovo and

Chechnya, established by royal decree, has built mosques, schools,

clinics, and shelters for displaced persons. It has also supplied the

province with several hundred tons of medicine, food, blankets,

tents, and clothing during the last 13 months.

 

But spreading the message of Wahhabi Islam appears to be another aim

of the committee. The new mosques are white, boxy structures devoid

of detail -- a far cry from the centuries-old Ottoman-style mosques

that characterize the urban and village landscape in much of the

Balkans.

 

Riedlmayer says NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers declined to intervene in

Djakovica after the Saudis showed their authorized papers.

 

"Eventually the Department of Culture in UNMIK (the UN

administration) was notified. They spoke with the Saudis on Thursday

and tried to get them to desist. However, on Friday, the Saudis sent

in a bulldozer [and] knocked down the buildings around the Hadum

mosque including the library built in 1733 and ancient gravestones in

the graveyard."

 

The Hadum mosque itself, which survived last year's fighting largely

intact -- despite fire damage to its porch and grenade damage to its

minaret -- remains endangered. If the past is prologue, the frescoes

could soon be whitewashed by Wahhabi purists.

 

Attempts by RFE/RL to contact the UNMIK-Joint Interim

Administration's Department of Culture, the Kosovo Institute for the

Protection of Monuments, or the Saudi Joint Relief Committee in

Kosovo, were unsuccessful.

 

However, Alvaro Higueras, of the UNMIK Culture Department, confirmed

in a telephone call to Riedlmayer late last night (Aug. 3) that the

Saudis had razed the library and Koran school.

 

Higueras says the Saudis planned to build a reinforced concrete

Islamic center on the cleared site. But the UNMIK official says the

Saudis applied for permission for a restoration project, not for new

construction. Higueras says an order has now been issued to stop

construction indefinitely. He says the Saudis will have to "undo the

damage" and restore the Ottoman-era buildings using traditional

materials and techniques.

 

Riedlmayer has documented cases in which the Saudi and other Arab aid

agencies have destroyed other historic Islamic buildings elsewhere in

Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Bulgaria.

 

Last October, while Riedlmayer was in Kosovo conducting a survey of

war-damaged architectural heritage, he witnessed the destruction of

Muslim cemeteries in Vucitrn (Vushtrri). He says an Islamic aid

agency from the United Arab Emirates had pressured local Albanian

residents to sledgehammer the graves of their ancestors, completely

clearing two historic graveyards next to the Gazi Ali Beg and

Karamanli mosques of more than 100 gravestones dating back to the

15th century. Only the grave marker of Gazi Ali Beg himself remained,

as the locals refused to allow that one to be smashed.

 

Riedlmayer says the UAE aid agency promised to rebuild the damaged

mosques "twice as big and twice as Islamic," but only if the

gravestones were removed. He says the agency, the largest aid

organization in the town, also made an implicit threat to withhold

humanitarian aid if the donors' request was ignored.

 

Riedlmayer notes that during and immediately after the war in Bosnia

(1992-95), a Saudi aid agency took charge of the restoration of the

Gazi Husrev Beg mosque (Begova dzamija) as well as other historic

mosques in Sarajevo and in many other towns and villages.

 

At the Beg mosque, the Saudis ordered the Ottoman tilework and

painted wall decorations stripped off and discarded and had the whole

building redone, as Riedlmayer puts it "in gleaming hospital white,

even the minaret slathered in white plaster." He says that in scores

of villages, the Saudis had war-damaged but restorable historic

Ottoman-style Bosnian mosques demolished and redone Saudi-style. All

of the colorful Balkan-Muslim interior decor was eliminated, and

separate entrances were added to segregate women.

 

To drive home the significance of the Saudi destruction in the

Balkans, Riedlmayer says, "Imagine, if you will, some terrible

catastrophe affecting the historic churches of Rome and Tuscany, and

then having [u.S. evangelist] Oral Roberts or Mormon missionaries

coming in, taking charge, and insisting that they be redone

in 'proper Christian style.'"